Mediterranean Men Unleashed: The Billionaire's Blackmailed Bride

‘Good idea, drink your coffee,’ he finally answered, ‘and join me in the salon when you are dressed.’ He didn’t trust himself to keep his hands off her, and she needed time to recover. ‘The chef has prepared lunch and then I will give you a tour of the yacht and introduce you to the captain and crew.’ Turning on his heel, he walked rather stiffly out of the cabin.

Emily drank the coffee and, sliding off the bed, headed for the shower. Washed and wearing only a towel, she glanced around the cabin and saw her suitcase standing by a wall of cupboards. She had never thought of unpacking it the night before. In a matter of minutes she unpacked her trousseau so carefully bought over the last few weeks. One exquisite evening gown, and a host of smart summer clothes, some stylish if slightly risqué lingerie and bikinis courtesy of Helen.

As she closed the lingerie drawer a secret smile curved her lips at the thought of wearing them for Anton. She slipped on lace briefs and a matching bra, and a pair of white cotton shorts and a blue cotton top she had chosen to wear. She brushed her hair back off her face and fastened it with a slide. She didn’t bother with make-up, just a sun screen; she was in a hurry to get back to her husband.

After lunch, Anton spent the next three hours giving Emily a tour of the yacht and introducing her to the captain and crew. The chief steward and the chef, he explained, arranged all the catering and the domestic running of the yacht. She wowed them all with her natural ease and grace, and her obvious interest in the mechanics of the yacht. Surprisingly for a woman she was quite knowledgeable about the workings of a ship.

While he appreciated her interest, after half an hour all he wanted to do was get her back into bed. Her fantastically long legs were displayed in all their glory by the shorts she was wearing and he could not keep his eyes off her. It hadn’t escaped his notice neither could any other man around.

‘So what do you think, Emily?’ he asked as he leant against the ship’s rail, and clasped his hands loosely around her waist, and drew her between his splayed legs.

‘I think it is the ultimate boys’ toy.’ She looked up at him with such love and laughter in her eyes, inexplicably his heart tightened and his body followed suit. ‘I have seen cruise liners smaller than this.’ She shook her head in amazement. ‘I am not surprised we are anchored offshore—there is probably not a berth big enough even in Monte Carlo.’ She laughed. ‘I knew you were wealthy, but I had no idea how rich.’ She grinned up at him. ‘A helipad, a swimming pool and a wicked-looking motor launch to take us ashore. It is unbelievable, I love it, and I love you.’ And he felt the touch of her lips against his chin.

‘Then that is all right,’ Anton answered gruffly, swallowing a peculiar lump in his throat.

‘But what I want to know is when are we sailing and where to? The captain, when I asked him, did not seem to know. Is our honeymoon going to be a mystery tour?’ she demanded with a chuckle, and moved seductively between his thighs increasing the ever-present sensual awareness between them.

Her bare legs brushing his sent his temperature soaring and Anton hardened still further; he could not help himself. But her question reminded him of where they were and why, and he felt a bit selfish, not a feeling he was comfortable with. He tightened his hands on her waist and lightly urged her back, then dropped his hands from her far-too-tempting body.

He let his gaze rest on her lovely face; her luminous eyes revealed her every thought. She was so open, so affectionate and this was her honeymoon.

His black brows pleated in a frown as belatedly he realized his decision to use the long-standing arrangement he had made for his annual trip to the Formula One Monaco Grand Prix to double as a honeymoon no longer seemed quite so reasonable. Emily had probably been expecting a romantic out-of-the-way place and just the two of them. Whereas he, without a second thought given the reason he had married her, had decided to do what he always did at this time of year, confident that Emily would fit in with his plans.

His frown deepened. He had never had to consider a woman’s feelings before. Every woman he had known in the past had been quite happy to pander to his every whim, and why not? He was an extremely wealthy man and a generous lover for as long as an affair lasted. He had made it clear from the outset he never had any intention of marrying them, all he had wanted was good sex. He didn’t do romance, and he wasn’t about to start now simply because he was married.

Married to the daughter of the man who destroyed his sister, he reminded himself. He had been in danger of forgetting that fact in the throes of what was basically nothing more than great sex, he reasoned. Straightening his broad shoulders, he told her the truth.

‘There is no mystery; I stay here at the end of May every year for the motor racing. The Monaco Grand Prix is on Sunday. As a sponsor for one of the teams, I usually watch the race from the pits. Then there is an after-race party,’ he explained, studying her reaction through narrowed eyes.

‘Oh, I see.’ Her blue eyes shaded and Anton knew she did not see at all. ‘I never realized you were a racing-car enthusiast, though I suppose I should have guessed. Boys’ toys again, hmm? Well, it will be another new experience, I suppose.’ And her sensuous lips curled in a bewitching smile. ‘At least I will have you to myself until Sunday.’

Frustration and the fact she was so damn reasonable angered Anton. That and the unfamiliar feeling of guilt that assailed him because he had not told her the half of it yet. For a brief moment he wondered if he could just order the captain to set sail immediately, but dismissed the notion.

Emily was his wife, his extraordinarily beautiful, incredible, sexy wife, but he changed his plans for no one, and he wasn’t about to start now. He had his life organized exactly as he liked it, and although Emily had a career it was pretty flexible—she would quickly adjust and go where he led.

‘Not exactly …’ He paused. ‘I don’t use the yacht solely for my own pleasure; sometimes it is chartered out. It would not be financially viable otherwise. But also as a single man up until now,’ he swiftly added, ‘it has been a convenient way to repay hospitality rather than the more conventional house party.’ He was prevaricating … not like him at all, and bluntly he told her, ‘Anyway, it has become a bit of a tradition of mine to invite a few like-minded guests whose hospitality I have enjoyed in the past to join me on board for the Grand Prix weekend, and they usually stay until Monday.’

For a long moment Emily simply stared at her very new husband. He was standing, his long body taut, apparently unconcerned. But she caught a glimmer of uncertainty in the depths of his dark eyes, probably a first for him, and she hid a smile. Anton had it all. Wealth, power, and as a one-hundred-per-cent-virile male he was accustomed to doing exactly what he wanted to do without ever having to consider anyone else. Women had been falling over themselves to please him all his adult life, if rumours were to be believed. But he obviously had a lot to learn about marriage—they both did.

‘Let me get this straight—you have invited guests on our honeymoon to watch motor racing. Yes?’

‘Yes,’ he said with a negligent shrug of his broad shoulder.

‘A novel honeymoon.’ Emily placed a slender hand on his chest. ‘But, hey, I am all for tradition, and if this is a tradition of yours, why not? In fact it will be nice to meet some of your friends. So far I have only met business acquaintances—and Max, of course. He made a very good best man, and where is he, by the way?’ she asked. ‘He came on board with us last night.’

‘He has gone ashore in the launch,’ he said, avoiding her eyes. ‘The guests are arriving this evening.’

Anton was obviously embarrassed, Emily thought, and, while she wasn’t delighted at the idea of spending the weekend with strangers, she allowed her smile to break free.

‘Don’t look so serious, Anton. It’s okay. We have only known each other a couple of months, but we have a lifetime together to get on the same wavelength.’ Standing on tiptoe, she kissed his cheek.

‘My mum told me she and my dad fell in love at first sight. They got engaged after four months and married two months after that. They had only ever lived with their parents until they married and it took time to adjust, especially as they were both virgins when they met. At least I have started off with a great lover even if you are dumb when it comes to arranging a honeymoon.’

Anton’s eyes narrowed incredulously on her smiling face and he was not in the least amused, the mention of her father hitting a raw nerve.

‘Dumb,’ he repeated. She had the cheek to call him dumb. Was she for real?

He scowled down at her and noted the shimmering sensuality in her sparkling eyes, and he did not know if he wanted to shake her or kiss her … For a man who prided himself on his control, he did not like the ambivalent way she made him feel. She looked about seventeen dressed in white shorts and a blue tee shirt the colour of her eyes, and her hair pulled back in a slide, and her youthful appearance simply increased his unwelcome sense of guilt and anger.

‘For God’s sake, Emily, you are the only dumb one around here. You can’t possibly believe that rubbish you are spouting. Your mother might have been a virgin, but your father certainly wasn’t. Trust me, I know,’ he declared with biting cynicism.

Emily’s euphoric mood took a huge knock. She stumbled back a step, her blue eyes widening at the icy expression on his brutally handsome face. The lover of a few hours ago had gone and in his place was the man with the cold, remote eyes that she had seen on the night they first met.

‘You knew my father?’ she asked, feeling her way through an atmosphere that was suddenly fraught with tension. ‘You met him?’

‘No, I never met him, but I didn’t need to to know what a womanizer he was.’

Emily could not let his slur on her father pass.

‘As you never met my father you can’t possibly know that. But I do know that my mother never lied,’ she argued in defence of her parents. She loved Anton, she had married him, but she was not going to let him walk all over her. It was bad enough she was going to share the first few days of her honeymoon with a group of strangers. ‘You’re not infallible, you know, and in this case you are wrong.’

Anton heard the belligerence in her voice, saw the defiance in her glittering blue eyes and was outraged that she was daring to argue with him. Very few people argued with him and nobody doubted his word. He could not quite believe his very new wife had the nerve to say he was wrong.

‘Your mother must have been as naive as you,’ he opined scathingly, ‘if she believed Charles Fairfax was anything other than a womanizing swine and a snob to boot.’ He was seething with anger and it made him say more than he intended. ‘He probably only married her for her aristocratic connection.’

Without her giving it a second thought Emily’s hand scythed through the air, but Anton’s strong hand caught her wrist before she could make contact with his arrogant face.

‘You little hellcat.’ He twisted her hand behind her back and hauled her hard against his long body. ‘You dare to lash out at me, because I have told you a few home truths about your sainted family.’

‘At least I have one,’ Emily spat, and was immediately disgusted with herself for what was a low blow. But somehow the passion Anton aroused in her sexually seemed to just as easily arouse her anger. She who was normally the most placid of women, and it shocked her.

She glanced up at him. He was looking at her with eyes as cold as the Arctic waste. Then abruptly he let go of her wrist and moved back as though he could not bear to touch her.

‘And do you know why I have not, Emily?’ he said with a sardonic arch of one black brow, and, not waiting for her to answer, he added, ‘Because of your lech of a father.’

‘You never knew my father, and yet you seem to dislike him,’ she murmured. She knew it from the animosity in his tone, the tension in his body, and suddenly she was afraid.

His handsome face hardened. ‘Dislike is too tame a word. I hate and despise the man, and I have every right to.’

Emily shook her head, trying to make sense of what was happening. She was too shocked to speak. How had they gone from a simmering sensual awareness to a senseless argument in minutes?

‘Once I had an older sister, Suki, a beautiful gentle girl. She was eighteen, barely more than a child herself, when she met Charles Fairfax. He seduced her and left her pregnant with his child. Five months later, after learning Fairfax had married your mother, she committed suicide. Obviously he was seeing both of them at the same time.’

All the colour leached from Emily’s face. This was no senseless argument, but deadly serious. She had never even known Anton had a sister. But there was no mistaking the absolute conviction in Anton’s voice, and for him to have apparently held a grudge against her father for over a quarter of a century she found totally appalling. She could not believe what she was hearing, didn’t want to.

‘No, that cannot be true.’ She murmured a denial. ‘My father would never have betrayed my mother.’

‘Believe me, it is,’ he said harshly. ‘Women who foolishly imagine they are in love are dangerous to themselves as well as to others. My mother never fully recovered from the loss of her daughter and I was kept in ignorance of the full facts for decades. As a boy of eleven I was told Suki had died in a tragic car accident. It was only when my mother was dying I discovered the real truth.’